I just wanted to take a moment to give thanks to all my friends on Motortopia for all the nice comments and trophies you have given my cars and trucks over the past year. It means a lot to get your opinions and I enjoyed reading all the compliments and I have enjoyed looking at all of your albums as well. You are a great group of people and I am fortunate to have you as my friends. I hope each and every one of you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and if you don't celebrate Christmas I still wish the best for you during this holiday season.

Sincerely your friend,
Jason Smeed

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Okay, I promise this is the last time I'll be changing my user name. I just couldn't get used to the "SlantedSwinger" name like I thought I could. That said I've changed it to MEANlowGREEN, the name I gave to my '63 Chevy. I'll try not to change it again in this decade anyhow! :o)

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I've started gathering parts for some performance upgrades I have planned for my '72 Dart Swinger. My goals are to increase performance while retaining decent fuel mileage. These upgrades should make the car a lot more fun to drive and hopefully I'll still be able to get decent mileage, at least when I keep my foot out of it. Below is a list of parts I have purchased or ordered. A large portion of them are on back order which is going to slow progress down considerably.

First I upgraded my ignition. I installed a Pertronix Ignitor Electronic Ignition Conversion Kit which replaces the old points and condenser set up. I also replaced the stock coil with a Pertronix Ignitor 40,000 volt coil. I installed a Blue Streak Distributor Cap, these have brass contacts in them and are a great performance product. Unfortunately they have discontinued the Slant Six cap but I was still able to find a new one on eBay. Next I installed a set of Accel Super Stock Spiral Core Plug Wires and screwed in a set of Bosch Platinum Plus plug wires gapped to .040. The extra spark made a noticeable difference in the power and made the car much more responsive. I haven't checked the fuel mileage since the tune up but I hope it has increased from the 13MPG baseline!

This past weekend I moved on to the next step in my performance upgrades by removing the stock mechanical fan and replacing it with a Flex-A-Lite 16 Electric Cooling Fan with S shaped blades controlled by a Painless Performance thermostat and wiring harness. The electric fan improves fuel economy by reducing the load on the engine caused by turning the fan. It also frees up a little horsepower that was required to turn the stock fan which by the way was a solid fixed fan, not a clutch style fan. Plus it just looks cool! I had to mount the fan in pusher mode, in front of the radiator because of a lack of room between the radiator and the long inline six engine block. The fan is working great and you can really feel the difference when accelerating at highway speeds. It keeps the engine very cool and runs real quiet.
Next on the list of upgrades are a Super Six 2 Barrel Aluminum Intake Manifold that has had the seam sealed with epoxy. This is important because these intakes are a 2 piece design and are prone to vacuum leaks at the seam. Also purchased was a Carter 2 Barrel Carburetor that was professionally remanufactured by a good carburetor shop. I plan to top off this set up with a Mopar Performance open element Air Cleaner that I custom painted Chrysler Blue and polished the raised letters and fins to a high luster then added a Summit Racing Tri-Bar spinner style wing nut.

I then ordered a set of Hooker Super Competition Painted Long Tube Tuned headers which I am having coated by Jet-Hot using their new Sterling Silver High Temperature coating. It's shinier than their original silver coating rivaling the luster of chrome plated headers but with a lifetime corrosion warranty! Jet-Hot coatings also reduce under hood temperatures resulting in a cooler running engine. Behind the headers I am going to have a custom 2 1/4 exhaust system bent and I will be using a Magnaflow Tru-X Performance X Pipe and two Magnaflow round body mufflers followed by a pair of tail pipes exiting under the rear bumper. I haven't decided on the type of tips I plan to purchase as of yet. One important thing I plan on doing. I am going to have the muffler shop install the header reducers, mufflers, and X pipe as well as tips if I use any with the new style stainless band clamps that do not distort the mufflers. I am doing this because I plan to use the head pipes and tail pipes as a pattern to be sent at a later date to a manufacturer with a mandrel bender. That way they can copy the exhaust but with free flowing mandrel bends and I can reinstall the same reducers, X pipe and mufflers onto the new head and tail pipes saving me a bunch of money!!!

Next on the list of performance upgrades is a Trans-Go Stage 2 Street/Strip Shift Improver Kit that I plan to install in my stock 904 automatic transmission. This will raise the shift points, allow me to down shift at any speed, hold the car in any gear as long as I need to and will give the car much quicker shifts. This reduces clutch slippage and reduces heat buildup in the tranny increasing the life of the transmission.

Last on my list of upgrades this go around is a Dana Sur-Grip limited slip unit and a set of 3.55:1 Gears by Motive Gear. This upgrade will increase off the line power and torque and will aid in traction by providing equal power to both rear wheels which should eliminate wheel spin. This could also hurt my fuel mileage but probably not by much on anything but freeway road trips.

I am already planning my next round of upgrades which include a camshaft, a small four barrel, and a trip to the engine machine shop! This will probably be a year or more down the road though. I plan to engine these upgrades for a while before I dive into stage 2.

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